COMPTON AND BALDERSTONE

Yes, you may have read this before...but it is the "turn" of the Seasons and football is beginning to take preference over cricket. As cricketer-footballers go, Chris Balderstone once of Carlisle United FC and Leicestershire CCC, might not have been in the "class" of Denis Compton (BELOW...please don't say "who?"). Denis won the Football League and FA Cup with Arsenal and is only one of eight men to boast a Test batting average for England of over 50 runs. 

BUT Denis had never played in a professional football match in the evening after helping his County cricket side to the County Championship that same afternoon; Balderstone had!!!

Huddersfield born, Chris Balderstone (SEE ON) was the last man to play both sports at the "top" level in England, although he never made it to the First Division at all. Before the 1973-4 season, Balderstone was "stripped" of his position as captain of Second Division, Carlisle United and suspended for chosing to remain playing cricket with Leicesterhire as they finished the county season.

The club softened their "stance", as Balderstone was recalled to help his beloved Carlisle United to promotion. He scored a decisive penalty against SPURS to send Carlisle top of the first published League table of the new season. Carlisle did not stay in the "top division" for long though, being relegated in last place, at the end of the season. Balderstone was transfered to Fourth Division Doncaster Rovers.

On the day, Leicestershire won the 1975 County Championship, at stumps, at Chesterfield, Balderstone was 51 not out . He then drove 30 miles to Belle Vue, where Donny "ground" out a 1-1 draw with Brentford. Chris was back at Chesterfield the following morning to complete his century and to take three wickets to wrap up the game. His innings of 116 is the only century to have built around a Football League match!

Chris played for Huddersfield Town, Carlisle Utd, Donny and Queen of the South. He played and umpired in first-class cricket making it to international level – he played in two Tests in 1976 and umpired in two ODIs between 1994 and 1998. In a long club career, he was a key part of the five trophy winning Leicestershire side of the early and mid-1970s.

Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1958–1965	Huddersfield Town	117	(24)
1965–1975	Carlisle United	376	(68)
1975–1976	Doncaster Rovers	39	(1)
1976–1978	Queen of the South	34	(0)

Football

Carlisle United:-

• Second Division 1973/74 – promotion
• League Cup 1969/70 – Semi finalist

Cricket

Leicestershire:-

• County Championship – winner – 1975; runner up 1982
• Sunday/National League – winner – 1974, 1977; runner up 1972
• Benson & Hedges Cup – winner – 1972, 1975, 1985; runner up 1974
• England

  Test debut	22 July 1976 v West Indies
  Last Test	12 August 1976 v West Indies

  Umpiring information
  ODIs umpired 2 1994-8

"Ray Illingworth took me to Leicestershire. I might be a decent bloke on the outside but he knew I was mentally hard through football. Cricketers might think they're pretty hard but they're not compared to footballers. It was a great move for me." 

In 1976, Balderstone was called into the England Test team to make his international debut aged 35 having focused in his younger days on football.

Chris Balderstone died suddenly at his home in Carlisle on 6 March 2000, having suffered from prostate cancer.

THE PENALTY KICK

September 14th 1891, the humble penalty kick was mastered by Germany! and invented by an Irishman named William McCrum, a Victorian mill owner and in his spare time!! a goalkeeper from Milford in County Armagh. McCrum came up with the idea to stop the cheating and and eventually the Football League in England thought it was a good idea to stop the cheating, so eventually the English Football League introduced it to the game. On this day in 1891, John Heath of Wolverhampton Wanderers scored the first ever Football League penalty kick, in a 5-0 thrashing of Accrington Stanley (who else!) at Molineux.

A penalty kick, commonly known as a penalty or a spot kick, is a method of restarting play in Football, in which a player is allowed to take a single shot at the goal while it is defended only by the opposing team's goalkeeper (or chosen "defender for that moment). 

It is awarded when an offence punishable by a direct free kick is committed by a player in his own penalty area. The shot is taken from the penalty spot, which is 12 yards (11 metres) from the goal line, and centered between the touch lines.

Hope this works for you....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZGsr4aT8z8

DER RAUMDEUTER

Thomas Müller born 13 September 1989) is a German professional footballer who plays as an midfielder for the Major League club Vancouver Whitecaps. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation. Nicknamed "der Raumdeuter" (the 'interpreter of space'), Müller has been praised for his positioning, finishing, work-rate, and consistency in both scoring and creating goals. He is both the all-time German top goalscorer and "providier" in the UEFA Champions League.

As a product of Bayern Munich's youth system which he joined at age 10 in 2000, Müller played for the club until 2025. With Bayern, he won a record thirteen Bundesliga titles, six DFB-Pokals eight DFL-Supercups, two UEFA Champions League titles, two UEFA Super Cups, and two FIFA Super World Cups. He joined the first team in the 2009-10 Season after Louis Van Gaal was appointed as the main coach; he played almost every game that season as Bayern won the League and Cup Double and reached the 2010 Champions League Final Müller also scored in the 2012 Champions League Final though Bayern lost that final on penalties. Müller scored 23 goals in the 2012-13 Champions League as Bayern won a historic treble; the league title, cup and Champions League. In the 2019-20 he broke the Bundesliga record for assists in a season with 21 (a joint record in the top five leagues alongside Lionel Messi in La Liga and Bruno Fernandes in the Premier League) and scored 14 goals as Bayern won a second treble. With 756 matches played across seventeen seasons, Müller is Bayern's All-time record appearance holder,  scoring 250 goals and providing 223 assists for the club across all competitions. He is one of only three players in league history to reach the landmark of 100 Bundesliga goals and 100 Bundesliga assists each (alongside Andreas Moller and Marco Reus). He also holds the record for the most UEFA Champions League appearances with one team.

Müller was called up to the German National Team in 2010. At the 2010 FIFA World Cup, he scored five goals in six appearances as Germany finished in third place. He was named the Best Young Player of the tournament and won the Golden Boot as the tournament's top scorer. At the 2014 FIFA World Cup, he played a major role in helping the team win the trophy, as he scored five goals and received the Silver Ball as the tournament's second best player and the Silver Boot as the second top goalscorer. He was also named in the World Cup All-Star XI and in the Dream Team. He retired from international football after the UEFA Euro 2024. On 1 October 2025, Müller became the most decorated German footballer in history with 35 trophies.

BAGS OF GOALS

This date is particularly historic and is worth publishing "again"...yes I have published this some years ago! 

The Scottish club, Dundee Harp, was founded to provide a focus of sporting interest for the city's large Roman Catholic community, largely of Irish descent, following the example of the leaders of the same community in Edinburgh who founded Hibernian in 1875 along the same principles. By 1879 the football craze had hit the capital and the city's "Little Ireland" community set up their own club in "Cowgate". As early as 1851, 19% of Dundee's population was Irish born, more than in Glasgow and one area was known as "Tipperary".

The club's ground was located near the gas works in East Dock Street. The club did not compete in a national league, mostly playing in local and regional competitions in the East of Scotland.

Harp's most notable result was a 35–0 victory against Aberdeen Rovers in a Scottish FA Cup game played on 12 September 1885. Remarkably, this occurred on the same day that Arbroath beat Bon Accord 36–0, the largest gap between two clubs in British Football League history. 18 year old John Petrie scored 13 goals, a Scottish Cup and a World record, that has been equalled but not beaten.

Although the referee in the Harp-Aberdeen Rovers game had noted 37 goals, Harp's secretary suggested a miscount must have occurred as he had recorded only 35. Some in the crowd counted 41 times that the ball went into the net!! The match official, acknowledging that it was difficult for him to keep accurate details during such a deluge of goals, accepted the lower tally and wired the official score of 35–0 to SFA headquarters.

Dundee Harp full back, Tom O'Kane, was an ex-Arbroath player, and he persuaded the Dundee club's officials to send a telegram to his former colleagues at Gayfield Park, boasting of his team's record breaking achievement. The Harp players and officials were not to know that Arbroath had actually gone one better against another unfortunate Aberdeen side on that same afternoon. On receiving the Harp telegram, Arbroath officials took great delight in sending a reply boasting of the Angus side's superior achievement. It was only when O'Kane arrived back in Arbroath on the late Saturday evening train that he discovered the truth. Locals were quick to tell him that the Arbroath result was no joke and Harp's record-breaking claim was about to be lost.

The club, Dundee Harp, later, was suspended by the SFA, in 1894, for inability to pay match guarantees to visiting clubs and so, sadly, Harp disappeared from the scene.

Plans to form a new club were reported in the local press only a week after Harp's demise, and as a result Dundee Hibernian was formed before a fortnight had passed. This club had no connection to the club of the same name, that was founded in 1909 and became Dundee United in 1923. This Dundee Hibernian changed its name to Dundee Harp in 1896, but the following year the club went out of business, weighed down by debts which it could not meet and was suspended by the SFA for inability to pay match guarantees to visiting clubs and Harp then disappeared from the scene.

A club named Harp F.C. was founded in the Lochee district of Dundee in 1904, this was a junior club (the equivalent of a non-league club in England), the level at which it still plays today, under the name Lochee Harp.

The club played at Magdalen Green from 1879 until moving to Tayside Park in 1881. In 1883 they moved to Viewforth Park, but moved again the following year to East Dock Street, also known as the Harp Athletic Grounds

The club, Bon Accord, was in the Cup by error, because the Scottish FA invited Orion Cricket Club into the cup rather than Orion FC. Orion CC members made up the name, Bon Accord, and had no proper kit or practice, but they turned up to play. Referee, Dave Stormont, had missed noting several goals that might have notched up 40 in total. Two seasons later in the first round of the Scottish Cup, Arbroath, by chance, hosted the real Orion FC and only beat them 18-0!

Arbroath went on to win their next match against Forfar 9-1 (should have been forty-four?) and then Dundee East End 7-1, losing to Hibernian 3-5 in the fourth round.

The biggest English FA Cup score we know is Preston 26 Hyde 0, achieved on October 15th 1887.
West Ham share the highest Football League Cup win, beating Bury 10-0 in a second leg game in October 1983 with Liverpool, who also put 10 past Fulham in September 1986.

THE COMPLICATED HISTORY OF THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION CUP(S)!

The English Football Association Cup was first played for in 1872 and the trophy was made by Martin, Hall and Co. It was 18" high, held a "quart" (two pints!) and stolen on September 11th 1895, from a shop where it was on "display" in Birmingham, the city where the winners, Aston Villa, originated.

Aston Villa were fined £25 by the FA for their lack of security after the club "lent" the cup to their local shoe shop owner who put on show for all to see. They did!! It was never recovered.

In the early days the cup was presented at a reception, indeed the first winners, the Wanderers, received the trophy four weeks later at a dinner held at the Pall Mall restaurant, Charing Cross. Whereas in 1882 the presentation ceremony was first held immediately after the game.

The FA Cup, known as "The Little Tin Idol", worth £20 was stolen from William Shillcock's Boot and Shoe shop 73 Newtown Row, in Birmingham, where it was on display after Aston Villa's Cup Final win on April 20th at the Crystal Palace. Villa beat West Bromwich Albion 1-0. Shillcock was a friend of William McGregor, the founder of the Football League (first competed for in 1888).
 
A hole on a "lean to" roof (18" x 12") and a set of size 5 footprints was all that was left by who ever carried out the robbery. A £10 reward bore no affect and it was assumed the cup would have been melted down to make silver coins.

The second cup was used until 1910, when it was presented to Lord Kinnaird, the FA's long serving president. He died in 1923 (same year as the FA Cup Final move to Wembley Stadium) and the cup was eventually auctioned in 2005 for £420,000. This was bought by David Gold who placed the cup in the National Football Museum in 2006.

The reason for the change in 1910 was Manchester United's fault. The club was not happy with the trophy that they won in 1909, so they had their own made! (apparently other copies were made in Manchester too). The FA noticed that they did not hold copyright to the original trophy and so had a new cup made by Fattorini and Sons, an Italian migrant family living in Harrogate and owning a factory in Bradford. Needless to say Bradford City won the "first final" in 1911 and carried away the 24 inch high cup.

A smaller replica of this cup was played for in the North Wales Coast FA Cup competition.

The tradition of tying ribbons to the cup handles was first started in 1901...yep, when Spurs won it from the lowly Southern League. The wife of the club's director brought navy and white ribbons with her to the final!

The Fattorini trophy served until 1991. The old cup was battered by use and replaced but the FA provided a heavier version in 2014 made by Thomas Lyte and weighing in at 14 pounds, as below.

10th OF THE 9th...BUSY DAY

 

The first attempt to offer the British TV public regular live League football started – and finished – on 10th September 1960 when ITV broadcast the Saturday evening fixture between Blackpool and Bolton. In 1953 those two clubs contested a famous Cup Final but by 1960 they were both struggling in the First Division and the fixture was missing its star player – Stanley Matthews – because of injury. It was a dismal match with poor TV ratings and the following Saturday (17th) Arsenal refused permission for their match against Newcastle to be televised as did Spurs the week after that (24th) for their match against Aston Villa. As a result ITV abandoned the project which was planned to last for 26 matches and nearly a quarter of a century passed before there was another live League match on British TV – Tottenham v Nottingham Forest - on 2nd October 1983. ********* 'Welcome to Match of the Day, the first of a weekly series on BBC 2. This afternoon we are in Beatleville....' So started the first Match of the Day which was broadcast on Saturday August 22nd 1964. Only the highlights of one match was shown - Liverpool v Arsenal - and it's audience on BBC2 was estimated at less than 100,000 because of the difficulty in tuning in to that channel at the time. Two years later it proved popular enough to move to BBC1. ********* The first MOTDs were of course in black and white. The first colour transmission was on 15th November 1969 at Anfield when Liverpool beat West Ham 2-0. At the time colour TVs were still rare so the commentators had to ensure that their commentaries were suitable for viewers with either colour or black and white sets. That caused problems. John Motson once famously said "For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all-yellow strip” Colemanballs ******* Yet another TV first for Arsenal came at the Emirates on Sunday January 31st 2010. Their 3-1 home Premier League defeat against Manchester United was the world's first live sports event to be broadcast in 3D. The experimental Sky broadcast was beamed to 9 pubs to test the technology and public opinion. ******* So, what wouldn't you make freely available to an alcoholic ex-footballer about to appear in a chat show on live national television? I'm sensing that most of you have got the right answer - alcohol! Sadly those in charge of the hospitality area prior to George Best appearing on the Wogan chat show in September 1990 didn't think along the same lines. When Best appeared on set he was clearly drunk. What followed was certainly memorable television, although for all the wrong reasons. The conspiracy theorists have it that the BBC intentionally plied him with drink to get the outcome that would give a ratings boost to the Wogan show. Whatever the truth it resulted in a sad episode in the troubled life of a player of genius. ********* "Welcome to Bologna on Capital Gold for England versus San Marino with Tennent's Pilsner, brewed with Czechoslovakian yeast for that extra Pilsner taste, and England are one down." Jonathan Pearce on radio's Capital Gold showing where the economic realities are! ********* Paul Gascoigne is another who should have been kept well away from alcohol before appearing on the box. To be fair when he made an appearance on Question of Sport alcohol was banned. But one of the team captains, Ian Botham, played one of his practical jokes on the footballer and convinced Gazza that Advocat was non-alcoholic and plied him with the drink. By the time Gascoigne realised that it was indeed very alcoholic he was past caring. Gazza and 'Beefy' were in the same team - they finished second! ********* The biggest TV audience in British broadcasting history was for a football match. The British Film Institutes has estimated that the 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany had a TV audience of 32.3 million, 200,000 more than watched the second-placed event, Princess Diana's funeral in 1997. The next most watched football match was the 1970 FA Cup final replay between Chelsea and Leeds United played at Old Trafford. An estimated 28.49 million watched that one which ranks as the 6th most watched event in British TV viewing history, just ahead of Charles and Diana's wedding in 1981 but just behind the Apollo 13 splashdown in 1970. ********* So, was it the formation of the Premier League in 1992 that did most to change the English game? Or was it the fact that in the same year Sky bought their first TV rights? In what seems like a bargain now they won the right to broadcast live Premier League games for five years for £304 million (later reduced to £190 million because of lack of foreign sales). The first match they televised was Nottingham Forest's 1-0 home victory over Liverpool on Sunday August 16th 1992, the second day of Premier League fixtures. Within 10 years Sky were paying over £1 billion for a three year deal and football was certainly never the same again! ********* Jimmy Greaves perhaps became as well known for his catchphrase It's a funny old game! as he once was for his deadly goalscoring but it wasn't him who first coined the phrase - well not the real him anyway! From 1984 to 1996 Spitting Image was one of the top comedy shows on TV, featuring puppet caricatures of celebrities of the time with Greaves being one of them. Central TV had the idea of having the real Jimmy Greaves interviewed by his Spitting Image puppet and during the interview it was his puppet that first used the phrase. So perhaps not surprisingly it was the puppet who was the brains behind the phrase rather than the man himself. The voice of the puppet was provided by none other than Harry Enfield. ********* Spurs made history in the 1960/61 season when they won the first League/FA Cup double of the 20th Century but their captain, Danny Blanchflower, had made history himself earlier in the season. On February 6th 1961 he became the first person to turn down an invitation from Eamonn Andrews to appear on BBC's This Is Your Life - and he did it live on air! He said 'I consider the programme to be an invasion of privacy.....nobody is going to press gang me into anything.' ********* Seems a long time ago now but do you remember those pre-internet days when to find a latest score or a result the only way you could do it was to get the TV zapper out and go to Teletext? ********* When Alex Ferguson retired from management he obviously used his time wisely as when his autobiography was published in October 2013 it became a record-breaking seller. By selling 115,547 copies of the book in its first week it became the UK's quickest selling non-fiction book since records began in 1998. Tony Blair's memoirs had only managed to sell 92,000 copies in its first week while even the top Royal best-seller was bettered - Paul Burrell's A Royal Duty only sold 77,000 copies. The only other football book in the top five at the time was David Beckham's autobiography My Side in number 4 spot with sales of 86,000 although to be fair the previous record holder, with 112,000 of first-week sales, did have a football connection. It was Delia, of Norwich City fame, with a cook book! ********* It's not unusual to see football-related adverts during the commercial breaks but few can really be called classics. Perhaps one of those few is the Ian Rush/who has ever heard of Accrington Stanley ad run by the Milk Marketing Board in the 1980s. An eight-year-old Carl Rice gave Accrington - who had dropped out of the Football League in 1962 -  the sort of publicity they never had when they were in the League. Accrington invited Carl to be guest of honour at a match in 2006 and later the same year they won their place back in the Football League. Carl let slip that Accrington weren't the first choice of club names they planned using - the original plan was to use Tottenham Hotspur but that idea was dropped when Spurs objected. But Accrington Stanley was perfect..

LOTS ON SEPTEMBER 9th!! (9th OF THE 9th GUNNERS' STUFF)

On the 9th of September 1893 Arsenal’s first defeat in the Football League Division 2: Notts County 3 Woolwich Arsenal 2. making it one draw and one defeat in the opening two matches. Billy Heath (the man who scored football’s first penalty in the league) made his Arsenal debut.  In the next game he scored Arsenal’s first ever hat trick.  

9th September 1911: First game for George Grant, who unlike most of our team in the early 20th century he was a local man, born in Plumstead in 1891.  His career incorporated Woolwich Arsenal, The Arsenal and Arsenal (same club!!), ending with the cessation of football for the First World War. In all he made 57 league appearances  and scored four goals!! He retired in 1919 and in all made 57 appearances  and scored four goals.

9th September 1916: Arsenal played Tottenham at Highbury, in front of an impressive crowd of 10,000 for a match in the wartime league.  It ended as a 1-1 draw. 

9th September 1922:  Tim Williamson dropped as goalkeeper after a series of poor performances, with Arsenal having lost all four opening games conceding 10, scoring one goal.  It was the first time Arsenal had failed to get a single point in the opening four matches.  However Arsenal’s first eight games were against last season’s top four!

9th September 1925: Newcastle United 1 Blackburn Rovers 7.  It was a game that forced Newcastle to rethink their defence in the light of the offside rule changes.  They did that and on 3 October beat Arsenal 7-0!!

9th Sept 1931: Games were overshadowed by the death of John Thomson, the Celtic goalkeeper, who died in hospital after fracturing his skull in a collision with Rangers forward Sam English in the match at Ibrox.  On this day Arsenal played Birmingham City away and still could not get their first win – the game ending in a 2-2 draw, Lambert and Hulme getting the goals.

9th Sept 1933: Arsenal were home to Manchester City, who had missed relegation by four points the previous season.  The Gunners' team included Jack Lambert for his third match in a row but the following month he was transferred to Fulham having played 143 league games for Arsenal and scored an amazing 98 league goals plus 11 in 16 Cup games.

9th Sept 1936: Arsenal played out a 1-1 draw with Brentford, making it four games and one win, and although the newspapers did not publish league tables this early in the season had they done so they would have found Arsenal sitting in 13th.  It was Jackie Milne’s first match!!

9th September 1969.  Arsenal 3 Glentoran 0.  Fairs Cup 1st round 1st leg.  The start of the journey to the first Euro trophy.  Graham got two of the goals and Gould the third, but only 24,292 turned up at Highbury.

9th September 1972: Newcastle 2 Arsenal 1 with a disappointing attendance of 23,849 perhaps fans realising how dull these teams had become – it took 20 minutes for a shot to get anywhere near the target and Arsenal played their off-side game.  Just over a year after the double it was boring boring Arsenal

9th September 1976: Pat Howard signed: Arsenal were using O’Leary and Simpson as their central defenders for the season, but with both out injured emergency cover was sought and Howard arrived from Newcastle.

9th September 1978: Arsenal lost 2-1 away to Nottm Forest after Brady had got matters going on six minutes with a 30 yard free kick to Stapleton who volleyed home.  The game also marked the third and final league appearance of Jimmy Harvey.  He moved on to Hereford in March 1980.

9th September 1981: Steve Gatting sold to Brighton and Hove Albion.  Having only played 58 league games for Arsenal he went on to play 316 times for Brighton in the league, before ending his playing career with Charlton.

9th September 1981: Norway 2 England 1 in the World Cup stunned the nation, leading Norwegian journalist Bjørge Lillelien to say, “Your boys took a hell of a beating” which became internationally famous.  Sadly Bjørge died in 1987 aged 60 from cancer.

9th September 1987:  Alexandre Dimitri Song Billong was born in Cameroon.  One of 28 children, at 16 he moved to France and signed for Bastia becoming part of the team after one season, and was selected for France Under 16s. In 2018 he moved to Swiss team Sion.

9th September 2024: Pepe confirmed by Arsenal to have left the club following the termination of his contract.